Our readers are probably already familiar with Fr. Dmitry Smirnov, the most popular preacher in Russia. He is a brilliant speaker, dynamic and highly entertaining. His sermons are sermons are short, shocking, and always very expressive.

Fr. Dmitry is very outspoken on issues such as abortion, LGBT, advocates large families and home-schooling and is the head of the Russian Church's Committee for Family, Motherhood, and Children.

However, Fr. Dmitry also has some strong opinions about history and politics.

In this clip from a top Russian talk show, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, he shares his view about how and why the Russian state originates fundamentally from Christianity:

Transcript:

- Recently, there has been an initiative to change the preamble of the Constitution to give credit to the historical role of Orthodox Christianity. How do you feel about that?

Dmitry Smirnov, one of Russia’s most popular priests:

- I'm glad because it's true. It's 26° outside, that's a fact. It is also a fact that our state was created by the RUSSIAN people whose whole life was centered around the church. They were Christians. 86% of the country was Christian. THEY created the state that gave us: Pushkin, Kazakov, Tolstoy, Suvorov, etc. — this incredibly powerful culture. If some European nation had a mere tenth of what Russia has, it would rank among the great nations of European culture.

Russia has everything: starting with military science and ending with amazing architecture. Everything! Art, music — any sphere you can think of! And all this was created by the RUSSIAN people.

It doesn't mean that Anton Rubinstein (a Russian Jewish Composer) didn't put his coin into this piggy bank. Vladimir Dal (an ethnic German) didn't have a drop of Russian blood but he was a great writer, a master of the Russian language, etc. — Russia was, after all, an empire.

But first and foremost it was RUSSIANS, baptized and believing in Christ, whose highest ideal was HOLINESS. There are only two countries in the world who have this ideal: the other one is Israel. Russia’s highest ideal was holiness.

- We'd have to stop after these words because it's a brilliant finale.

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